Friday, October 10, 2014

Almost certainly in no one’s mind but my own, there is an alternative universe in which Harry Nilsson’s last album, Flash Harry,
had a song on it by Michael Dare, catapulting me into a new career path
as songwriter deluxe because what on earth could be fucking cooler than
Harry Nilsson covering one of your songs. I would have been on a very
short list of songwriters including Fred Neil, Randy Newman, and John
Lennon. Once again, you’re going to have to trust me on this one, and
once again, it’s a pathetic tale of how I coulda been a contender. I’m
as sick of them as you are, and yet when people ask me Mr. Dare, you
were born in Beverly Hills, how did you end up in subsidized housing in
Seattle, one of the answers that invariably pops to mind is Well, Lowell
George could have lived at least an hour longer. And by the time you’re
done reading this, that last sentence will make perfect sense.

Before
I became a journalist in the 1980s, I spent the 1970s doing nothing but
theater, sometimes acting, sometimes as a musician, and sometimes as a
composer. One day Alice Cooper hired me to score a musical called Ward 22
that took place in an insane asylum. I was given a complete libretto,
wrote a score, and the production reached the point where they asked me
who I’d like as an arranger. The first name that popped out of my head
was Van Dyke Parks, my hero at the time. Go get ‘em, they said, and that
I did.

It turned out Van Dyke Parks lived around the
corner from me in West Hollywood. I played him the songs, he said yes,
and we started hangin’. So what if the play didn’t happen. Nothing in
Hollywood ever happens unless it magically does.

We remained pals. We hung out backstage with Steve Martin and the Blues Brothers. I was the photographer at his wedding.

One day I played him a chorus for a song I’d written called Small Favors. He liked it. A couple days later, he brought by Martin Kibbee, Lowell George’s songwriting partner on Rock ‘n’ Roll Doctor and Dixie Chicken, both Little Feat
classics. He asked me to play him the chorus. Martin went into a corner
with a pad of paper and 10 minutes later, magically, had two verses
that worked perfectly. We had a song that ended
up in the queue of songs for Little Feat to potentially cover.

Then
Van Dyke advocated for me in the most amazing possible way. He had
produced Randy Newman and Ry Cooder’s first albums, both of which
tanked, presumably because neither could sing very well. Van Dyke
introduced Randy Newman to Harry Nilsson, who could sing VERY well. The
result was Nilsson Sings Newman, one of the greatest albums ever.

On
June 29, 1979, 35 years ago today, Van Dyke decided to do something similar for
me. He showed up unannounced and said “I’m on my way to do some
recording with Harry Nilsson. Wanna come?”

My brain
exploded. Harry Nilsson never did a concert. Not one. Ever. He appeared
on some TV shows and made some movies himself, all of which you can see
in the excellent documentary Who is Harry Nilsson (And Why Is Everybody Talkin' About Him?),
but as far as seeing him at the Troubadour, unless you were there the
night he was thrown out with John Lennon (I was.), impossible. He did
not perform in public. The only way to actually see him sing in person
was to be there in the recording studio with him. A dream was about to
come true.

On the way over, Van Dyke just said to play it
cool, we were there to work with him, and if the timing was right, he
would ask me to play a few songs for him.

I’m pretty sure
it was Wally Heider Studios but I may be wrong. A small studio, a piano
and guitar but mainly a mike. Today was for vocals. Harry was recording
his version of Let’s All Look on the Bright Side of Life from Monty Python’s Life of Brian
when we stepped into the control room. He finished, took off his
headphones, and switched rooms. Van Dyke introduced us, I pulled out a
joint, and we sat back to listen to playback.

We had just
started talking when the phone rang and Van Dyke answered it. His face
went pale. Lowell George was dead. I had never met him but that didn’t
make me any less depressed than Harry and Van Dyke. Harry pulled out a
bottle of cognac and we started drinking. They told their Lowell George
stories but I had no stories to share other than my love of his talent.

I
can only explain it like this. Let’s say you had been there with Paul
McCartney the instant he found out John Lennon was shot. It would not
have been the time to say Hey man, listen to THIS.

The
timing was not right and it would never be right. To the best of my
knowledge, that was Harry Nilsson’s last recording session, and the
album, Flash Harry, wasn’t even issued in the United States until 2013, years after his death. He just fucking gave up.

Years
later, I was covering some Science Fiction Award show for the LA
Weekly, got bored, went outside to smoke a joint, and found myself alone
on the roof of the Hollywood Palace with Harry Nilsson. I asked him
what he was doing there. Turned out he produced the show. Why? Why not? I
asked if I could take his picture. He said no. We had a nice talk but I
didn’t sing him any songs and I’m pretty sure he didn’t remember me
from the recording session. I wasn’t going to bring up the last time I
saw him.

Can you blame my psychiatrist for diagnosing me with delusions of grandeur when I mention there could have been an album called Nilsson Sings Dare?
How many people ever got close to a shot at such a thing? Nobody, so I
guess I should be grateful for having the memory, for knowing that Van
Dyke believed in me, but still, it’s like a brain worm, considering how
fucked up my life turned out to be, there was a moment when that dream
was in my grasp. If only Lowell George had died at least an hour later.

Here are some of the songs I might have played for Harry, performed 35 years later on pianos in public parks in Seattle.